by Huff, Tanya
Piroj pulled out his knife—one of the personal possessions he’d brought along—and flicked it open. “Ayumi, move. This is taking too fukking long; rest of the platoon’ll be up our ass in a minute.”
McGuinty frowned as Ayumi moved away without either argument or innuendo. The latter proved, more than anything, that the di’Taykan were dangerously distracted. It was getting to where he might actually need to have a few words with Sergeant Annatahwee over lunch—Human to Human. He hated to do it, though; talking behind the di’Taykan’s backs seemed uncomfortably close to being a snitch.
He couldn’t decide whether he admired the efficient way Piroj hacked Lirit free or if he was appalled by the destruction of habitat—knew he couldn’t have done it, though. No station-born could. Real actual growing things were treated with all the reverence an oxygen producing system deserved and to take a knife to one . . .
For half a second he thought the explosions in the distance were the sound of station security charging through the decom doors and about to come down on them with both feet, then his brain caught up with the here and now.
“Incoming!”
“No, it’s behind us!”
Lirit charged through the remaining bushes and whirled to stare back along her path. “The platoon!”
“But they’re following us and there was nothing!”
“We saw nothing.”
“That fukking sounds like something!”
“You need to contact . . .” Ayumi began, but Piroj cut her off hard.
“No! That’ll give our position away. Platoon’s walked into an ambush—enemy knows how far ahead scouts work, they think we’re out of the picture. Lirit’s kept us close enough we can haul ass back there and ambush the ambush. Scanners down, team. Let’s haul ass.”
Torin dropped to one knee and raised her weapon as a round blew through the eight centimeters of snow and still had enough left to kick up a spray of frozen earth. Angle said the shooter was in the trees. The only tree close enough to give that kind of cover was a huge evergreenat about forty degrees, so she fired five quick shots into the branches 3.5 meters off the ground. She could hear the DIs yelling orders, could hear the staccato slam of weapons fire, could hear branches and small trees blowing apart, but all she could see was the way those branches moved when shot, exposing the edges of a familiar energy signal to her scanner. Three more rounds and a blaze of red light as the drone tumbled out of the tree and slammed into the snow.
Three answering rounds from farther out on the right tumbled her back into the hollow where the major lay, half over Dr. Sloan.
“Right in the middle of our fukking formation!”
“Yes, sir! Good thing there was only the one . . .” A half rotted log exploded right by her face. Spitting out a bit of frozen fungus, she surged back up onto her knee and snapped off half a dozen shots. The second drone fell, surrounded by a shower of evergreen boughs. “. . . tree,” she finished dropping down again.
“Might be more than two drones.”
“That’s why I’m still down here, sir. Doesn’t look like it, though.”
“If you can see them in your scanners, why didn’t you shoot them first?” the doctor demanded, using elbows and knees to dig a little deeper down into the hollow.
“They took us by surprise, ma’am. That’s the whole point behind an ambush.”
“Why didn’t your scouts see them?”
“This is just a guess, Doc, but I’d say they were hidden.” The major rolled over onto his back. “Looks like you got them, Gunny. Left or right?”
“Right, sir.”
“Do it!”
As they started to move, surprisingly strong hands locked around Torin’s ankle and the major’s wrist. “Just where,” Dr. Sloan demanded, “do you two think you’re going?”
Torin yanked her ankle free. “We’re under attack, ma’am.”
“Really?” She had to shout to be heard. “That explains all the noise.”
“We’re being attacked from both sides of the march,” Major Svennson explained, signaling for Torin to stay put for the moment. “We three are in the middle of the march. The gunny and I can’t fire from here because there are Marines between us and the enemy.”
“And that’s about you; what about me?”
“You’re chipped. You’re safe.”
“Then wouldn’t you be safer with me?”
“We’d be safer behind you, but it doesn’t work that way, ma’am. We need to be part of this fight.”
The doctor waved a hand toward the evergreen. “What were you just doing then? Never mind,” she snapped before Torin could answer. “In this scenario of yours, you’re protecting me, so if you want to keep to the scenario, you should stay here.”
“Yes, ma’am, but this attack is off the scenario, so we need to be where we can do the most good and that’s with the recruits.”
“Off the scenario!”
When Torin rolled her eyes, the major waved her on. “You go. I’ll explain.”
“Yes, sir!”
The ambush had pinned the platoon in an area of second growth—probably growing up after having been shot to shit in a scenario some years earlier. They had very little cover and were, for the most part, attempting to become one with the ground, hoping their combats would make them look like just another mound of snow.
A well-armed mound of snow, Torin amended as she crawled toward the line on the right. She paused as the trunk of a sapling about three centimeters in diameter exploded beside her, splinters thudding into her pack like hail, the top of the tree blown back and hung up somewhere behind her. Okay. That wasn’t good. The drones were programmed to keep from creating potentially deadly shrapnel near the recruits, but as she wasn’t in trainers, she was apparently fair game. A quick scramble on elbows and knees brought her up to the fallen log Kichar and her fireteam were using to extend their cover and in under the protection of the recruits’ combats.
About three meters away on the other side of the log, the underbrush got thicker and the trees got distinctly bigger.
A splash of red pooled around Lynne Bonninski’s right calf. The drones fired nonlethal rounds but the meaty part of exposed extremities was considered fair game.
“Bonninski?”
“Just a crease Gunnery Sergeant! Hurts, but I’m fine.”
“Good.” The seal sprayed over the wound looked like it was holding, but she leaned forward and checked the readout on the recruit’s sleeve. In the adrenaline rush of battle everyone underestimated wounds, and Torin had no intention of having anyone bleed out. Bonninski’s combats agreed with her assessment of the injury, so Torin settled for tossing a double handful of snow over the red.
“Too visible,” she explained when the recruit turned to look. “Blood on snow can give your position away.”
A fist-sized chunk exploded out of the top of the log.
“I think they know where we are, Gunnery Sergeant!” Sakur yelled as the fireteam ducked.
“The time to duck,” Torin snapped, “is before the hit, not after. After you shoot back along their trajectory before they have a chance to take cover. You!”
Hisht jerked, chin coming up out of the collar of his bodyliner.
“Load up your impact boomers!”
His hands responded before his brain did. He snapped the standard magazine out of the KC-9 and snapped the impact boomers in.
“On my three, we’re going to lay down covering fire and you’re going to blow the biggest tree you can see to hell and gone.”
About to raise his weapon, Hisht froze. “I . . .” Nose ridges flared open as far as they’d go, he began to shake.
“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, he can’t . . .”
Torin shot Kichar a look that stopped the words cold. “Hisht!” She locked eyes with him, fully aware that, to the rural Krai, trees were home and food and safety and to destroy a living tree was one small step away from murder. Hisht was in the Corps now. “I guarantee there’s something hiding b
ehind that tree trying to kill your team! You hesitate, they’re dead!” Reaching out, she turned his face toward the older growth forest. “Sakur, Kichar, aim high. On my three!
“One!
“Two!
“Three!”
Drones were programmed with the same instincts of self-preservation nonmechanical soldiers exhibited. Most living things wanted to stay that way, regardless of species. Blanketing fire from four KC-7s kept the drones down long enough for Hisht to aim and fire.
A glint of metal in the flying debris. Four shots and a sudden blaze of red light. Torin had no idea which of them had actually hit the drone, nor did she care.
“How did you know?” gasped Bonninski as they dropped back behind the log.
“If you can’t see the enemy, you shoot at what you can see—the shit they’re using for cover. Where would you have been if you’d been on that side shooting at us?”
“Behind that tree?”
“Is that a question?”
“No, Gunnery Ser . . .”
The grenade hit the snow by Kichar’s boot with an ominous thud.
Torin ripped the grenade shield off her vest, scooped up the explosive, and flipped it back at enemy lines. “Down!”
It blew back behind the enemy position.
When she lifted her head, ears ringing, all four recruits were staring at her. “Never do that,” she snapped, reattaching the shield to her vest. Instinct had kicked in before brain cells. “You slap your shield on the grenade, hit the anchors, and pile whatever’s handy and inanimate on top. You pick it up, it could blow in your face. If I’d thrown it too close to a tree, a splinter in under the edge of your helmet would kill you too dead to tank.”
“But that grenade was thrown from close in, so you knew you had more time because it had spent less time in the air. And a shield is only good once; it won’t take a second cover, so using it like you did saves it for later when you might not have the opportunity of a return throw. Also, if their own grenade returned does enough damage to the enemy, they’ll think twice about continuing to use them. Right, Gunnery Sergeant?”
Unable to decide if she was impressed or annoyed by Kichar’s analysis, Torin snorted. “Essentially right. But until you get to a rank where you don’t have to listen to me—which would mean you’ve stayed alive about as long—you use your shield the way the nice folks in R&D intended.”
“It was just a thunderstick,” Sakur snorted. “We’ve got the frag grenades, not the drones.”
“You sure of that, Sakur?”
“The Corps isn’t going to blow us up.” He blinked at Torin’s expression. “Is it?”
“No way of knowing, so you treat everything on Cruciblelike it can kill you because some of it can.” She turned to Hisht. “You okay?”
His nose ridges were wide open; short, shallow breaths blew out a constant thin cloud of water vapor. “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
He didn’t look okay, but she’d deal with that later.
“Rest of the platoon’s pinned down in that thinned bit.” Piroj adjusted his scanner and tried to pick up individual heat signatures, but with only the faces radiating it wasn’t easy. “Doesn’t look like they’ve taken a lot of damage—the trees are small, but they’re screwing up the enemy’s lines of sight. Our side’s using impact boomers. Crucible isn’t.”
Elbows planted on the rock, Lirit kept the KC-9 pointed at the fight. “I heard a grenade, though— unshielded. Didn’t sound like one of ours.”
“Stupid to toss a grenade in a woods,” the Krai grunted. “Fighting’s too close. Wood shards can do us easily as them. You people always forget a pointy stick’ll kill you just as dead as heavy ordinance.”
“We people?”
“Non-Krai.”
“I think if a grenade went off,” Lirit snorted, “I’d be more worried about shrapnel from the grenade than bits of tree.”
“Your mistake.” He adjusted his scanner again and frowned. “If our guys stay down, they’re not in bad shape. They’re hard to see in all that uneven ground. Hard to see means hard to hit, and most of them seem smart enough to lay off the explosives.”
“Were you asleep in tactics, then?”
He glared at her through the transparent overlay of the scanner. “What?”
“Why would the enemy hold a platoon stationary?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she answered for him. “Air strike!”
“Fuk!” Turning, he slid down the outcrop of rock they’d been using as a vantage point, hitting level ground less than a meter from the rest of the fireteam. McGuinty staggered back, Ayumi brought her weapon up. When Lirit landed beside him a second later, startling them again, the profanity started. “Forget that shit,” Piroj snapped, “there could be an air strike by any minute and that could take the whole platoon out!”
“An air strike?” McGuinty moved back in close. “How do you know?”
“The platoon’s pinned, being held in place. Simple tactics.”
“I told him,” Lirit added.
“So we have to get them moving.” Ayumi swept a skeptical gaze over the other three. “How?
“Easy.” Piroj shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We make the enemy think they’ve been flanked. Ayumi and McGuinty, go left until your scanner says you’re lined up with the drones. Lirit and I will go right. Ten minutes to get into position, then we all start shooting. The enemy won’t be hiding from us, so that’ll give us an advantage targeting. Take out as many of them as you can, but mostly bring down sound and fury.”
Lirit grinned and snapped in her impact boomers.
“Air strike?” Sakur’s eyes darkened to near fuchsia.
“Number one reason to immobilize the enemy. Make them a target for your air support.” This part of the scenario wasn’t supposed to have air support, but then, this part of the scenario wasn’t supposed to have happened so Torin wasn’t ruling it out. “Two responses. One, we move forward fast, out of the killing corridor.”
“Not going to happen, Gunnery Sergeant!” Bonninski jerked her head toward the thicker trees, and almost in response another piece got blown out of the top of their log.
“It’s not as easy as you think to hit a moving target you can barely see,” Torin told her. “On the other hand, once they realize we’re moving, it’s not a waste of ammo to spray the whole damned area. They’d be guaranteed to hit something. Marginally more survivable than an air strike, though.”
“But if they’re not firing lethal rounds,” Sakur began. Paused. “One shot in the leg is nonlethal, half a dozen . . .”
“Could cut your leg off at the knee,” Torin told him matter-of-factly, pleased that he was thinking.
“Swell,” Bonninski sighed. “And the second response?”
“Take the fight to them. Charge them behind a spray of impact boomers. Hit them with the lighter stuff as they break cover.”
“And we learn whose morale is stronger.”
This time there was no question, Torin was impressed. “Exactly.” She nodded at Kichar, whose cheeks darkened under her scanner. “If ours is, they run. If theirs equals ours, it comes down to hand-to-hand. To hand. Occasionally claw. And that is always more survivable than an air strike.”
“What if they have more stronger morale, Gunnery Sergeant?” Hisht asked.
Torin snorted, glad to see he was taking an interest again. “That won’t happen.”
“Actually, Gunnery Sergeant,” Kichar began reluctantly, “on Norton’s Down, the . . .”
“I didn’t say that it has never happened,” Torin interrupted. “I said it wouldn’t happen. Not here, not now.”
They lay quietly for a few moments; the enemy kept up random fire, the recruits shot back enough to keep them from advancing. Torin saw no more of the red flares that indicated a drone had been taken down, but neither did she hear any of the screaming that suggested a recruit had. There’d be more small stuff, like Bonninski’s crease—the point of Crucible was to teach proto-Mari
neshow to act under fire, and that didn’t work if they knew they wouldn’t be hurt—but as long as everyone kept their heads, they should get through this with minimal damage. Right up to and not including that possible air strike.
There had been a scenario a few years ago; a platoon had gotten pinned four days in and an air strike had knocked the lot of them out with gas bombs. They’d woken with headaches and dead Marine scrawled on their combat vests. Their DIs had not been impressed and had bounced the whole lot of them back to day one hundred. The second time through, they’d kicked Crucible’s ass. Two of them had landed in Sh’quo Company, and Torin had to admit they were among the most motivated Marines she’d ever known.
If she, personally, got caught in a gas-out today, she was going to be very pissed.
“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”
“Kichar.” Torin shot at a weird-looking shadow and dropped back down onto the packed snow.
“What would you do here?”
“I’m doing it.”
“No, I meant, what would you do in response to this situation, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“If I was your senior DI?”
“Yes, sir!” Her cheeks darkened again. “Gunnery Sergeant.”
“But I’m not your senior DI, and this is his platoon. I’m therefore going to do what Staff Sergeant Beyhn tells me to do. Just like you are.”
Sakur glanced up at the sky through the bare branches of the trees. “Staff Sergeant Beyhn hasn’t told us to do anything, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“And yet the entire platoon went to ground and returned fire . . .” Two quick shots at that same weird shadow. “. . . and are still alive.”
“Yeah, but that’s because we were trained . . .”
“By?”
“Staff Sergeant Beyhn.” Sakur shook his head, took a quick shot of his own, and dropped down to grin at her. “Point taken, Gunny.”
What the hell; they were pinned down together behind a rotten log, in a frozen forest, expecting an air strike, and—so far—no one in this particular group of recruits had done anything particularly stupid. She let the gunny stand.
“Gunny?”
“Major.”
They were with Platoon 71 but not of it; the private channel reinforced that. The enemy’s guns made it easier to keep her voice under eavesdropping volume in such close quarters.
